Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Fierce fighting has erupted between Western-backed insurgents and Kurds in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo amid growing threats of a Turkish military intervention...The fighting began on Friday after several hundred armed opponents of the Syrian government, dressed in black and wearing black bandanas inscribed with Islamist slogans, moved into the predominantly Kurdish neighborhood of Ashrafiya.The incursion triggered a demonstration by Kurdish residents of the district, who marched on the positions taken by the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA), demanding that its fighters leave the neighborhood. According to reports, the FSA fighters fired on the demonstrators, killing five and wounding 10 more.According to the reports, five Kurdish fighters died in the clashes, with the rest of the fatalities consisting of the Islamist insurgents and civilians. In the course of the fighting, the Islamist forces kidnapped at least 120 Kurdish civilians in an attempt to force the area to submit to their occupation.

The fighting that followed claimed at least 30 lives, including those of 22 combatants, before the Kurds reasserted control over the district.

Ashrafiya has become a key objective of the Western-backed forces seeking to topple the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. It is on the main route leading from the northern outskirts of the city to its center and occupies the high ground of Aleppo, Syria’s commercial capital.

In the face of a growing challenge from the so-called rebels, increasingly dominated by Islamists and foreign fighters armed and funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, with Washington’s collaboration, the Assad regime had relinquished control of Ashrafiya as well as of predominantly Kurdish areas in northern Syria.

The PYD issued a statement after the fighting, declaring, “We have chosen to remain neutral, and we will not take sides in a war that will only bring suffering and destruction to our country.”

The statement blamed the bloodshed on the Islamist militias. “They started to shoot at the crowds gathered at the [FSA] checkpoints,” it said. “They were protesting, calling on the armed groups to leave residential neighborhoods.”

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